Sorry about the double post. My lawyer friend just called and what he said is still fresh in mind.
I forgot he was a letter carrier for a while too !! DUH ! He worked for my other friend the postal supervisor.
There is apparently a lot of dog specific training that he went through. Including videos about agresive dogs with real trained attack dogs etc.
There is an animated training video about NOT putting your hand in the mail slot. The video shows a dog salivating, inside the door waiting for something to come through the mail slot. They are very carefully trained NOT to put their hands inside the mail slots just for this reason. And it is repeated. He said he got his hand caught in a mail slot once anyway.
If there is a potential problem noticed at at house the carrier will normally mark the mail slot with a note and tell the supervisor, so the information can be passed on to others and kept on record.
Typically the first dog bite is not a legal problem, as the owner can claim that the dog had been friendly and he had no knowledge of a threat to others. The second bite is different, now the owner knows about the threat and should have done something to prevent it.
He says legally the Post Office would not be sueing me. They will try and hand me the bill anyway, why not?
My decision on my own will be to pay reasonable medical bills for this womans injury anyway. I think it's the right thing to do. She might sue me, but he has seen a lot of situations like this that he thought would lead to a law suit, but did not. He told me a lot of first hand experiences about dogs behind the door waiting for the mail, dogs getting the mail and chewing it up, the mail being pulled in by surprise by a quiet dog etc. It's very common and they talk to each other about it. He said call him first if there is any other paperwork to do.
This guy is a well known lawyer in my state. He takes a dog as a foster parent on the weekends that is being trained to be a special needs help dog by the state. He likes dogs. He's borrowing one of Bailey's crates. I think he has owned a dog all his life. I can't imagine a better information source or someone better to go to bat for me than a former letter carrier lawyer, that loves dogs !
